Thursday, March 16, 2006

Not alone

I still think MUN behaved terribly during the whole Chandra Affair and that they haven't been nearly contrite enough. However, it appears they're hardly the only Canadian university engaging in fraud.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) reports they gave more than $12 million to projects in which researchers have been found to be violating research ethics or integrity rules since 2003. Those schools include Dalhousie University, McGill University, McMaster University, Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, Universite de Montreal, and Universite de Sherbrooke.

This is my favourite section in the piece:

CIHR has also complained that its investigations are hampered by government secrecy and unco-operative universities. The documents released by CIHR reveal universities, in some cases, have let misconduct investigations drag on so long that researchers accused of faking results or unethical conduct had moved on to new jobs or left the country.

Sound familiar?

So MUN is in good company, apparently. I guess the only difference is that none of these schools, so far, have had hour long documentaries done on their fraud on national television. Still, you can't help but feel that the more this type of story comes out, the more diluted MUN's offence becomes. They weren't the only ones doing it; they were just the trailblazers.